Silicone Ice Cube Tray Activities

1. Make colored ice to play with (let them move the ice around on a piece of paper towel and it will “paint”) – Karen
2. Freeze small items into ice cubes. An older child can experiment with how to get them out (hot water, salt, a mallet, etc.) – Karen
3. Sorting! See what fits in the cubes and what doesn’t. – Emily
4. Make ice cubes and let your child smash them with a rubber mallet outside. – Sarah
5. Make cube crayons. Melt crayons one at a time into the tray and they’ll be rainbow crayons. – Sarah
6. Puree and freeze different fruits and vegetables. Let your child try cucumber, carrot, grape, pear, etc. “popcicles”. – Sarah
7. Fill with paint and let your child mix the different colors – Sarah
8. Fill with water and drop different colors of food coloring into the water. Give child strips of paper towel to dip into the colors. They will climb up the towels. (Do on tile or in bathtub) – Sarah
9. Practice 1:1 correspondence by having her put 1 item (snack food, straw. . . ) in each spot. – Kristen
10. Let the child figure out how to get the cubes out of the tray. – Sarah
11. Make jello “wiggle blocks” and build with them.  -Sarah
12. Put an item in the first cube for each row. Let the child sort matching items into the other cubes in the row. (same color pom poms, types of bean..)
13. Have the child move objects around in the tray using their fingers, tweezers or chopsticks depending on age.

Add your ideas in the comments section below, and I’ll add them to this post!

Every Sunday I’ll be giving Nurshable readers a room in their house and asking for pictures of different items from that room. I’ll post those pictures and we can share ideas for activities that use that object. Let’s fill up our Playfulness Toolkit and find the play in every room!